It’s a dark and stormy night, 28,000 feet over the Midwest. Just after 10:30 PM, I’m standing aft of the cockpit of a NASA DC-8, while lightning flashes outside the cabin windows. »7/24/15 6:53pm 7/24/15 6:53pm

California’s Lake Tahoe is known for being blue—really, really blue. And for a long time people assumed that bright color was because it was so clear. We now know that isn’t the case after a study on the lake revealed something weird. »7/24/15 7:00am 7/24/15 7:00am

Carbon emissions aren’t just changing the climate — they’re making it harder to solve crimes. As our atmosphere fills with fossil carbon, scientists will have a tougher time using radiocarbon dating, a standard forensic technique, to analyze human remains and wildlife tissues. »7/21/15 2:52pm 7/21/15 2:52pm

The Pacific Northwest is due for a continent-rending earthquake. Experts believe the odds of a Big One happening in the next half century are about one in three, the odds of a Very Big One roughly one in ten, and that, in either case, we are disastrously unprepared. »7/13/15 10:40am 7/13/15 10:40am

There’s been much debate these past few years over the cause of the so-called global warming “hiatus”—a pause in the overall uptick up of Earth’s temperature due to cooling at the surface of the Pacific Ocean since the early 2000s. Did climate warming stop? Nope, we just weren’t looking deep enough. »7/09/15 5:11pm 7/09/15 5:11pm

Remember that brilliant picture of the Colima Volcano in Mexico we shared yesterday? The photographer, Cesar Cantu Quiroga passed along something better - a time lapse of the eruption, which shows just how awesome the volcano’s eruptions are. »6/28/15 2:30pm 6/28/15 2:30pm

None of us would be alive today without plants, and if humans want to survive beyond Earth long-term, we’ll need to bring our leafy greens with us. Eventually, astronauts are going to have to become space farmers. »6/18/15 11:20am 6/18/15 11:20am

The image you’re looking at is a glimpse into our future. Welcome to July 2099, according to 21 different climate models. CO2 concentrations have topped 900 parts per million, comprising nearly 0.1 percent of our atmosphere. (In early 2015, we hit 400). »6/14/15 2:30pm 6/14/15 2:30pm

India is known for becoming a sweltering furnace in May, but last month was exceptionally brutal, with temperatures hovering 10 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for nearly two weeks. By June 4th, the heat wave had claimed over 2,500 lives, making it the fifth deadliest in recorded history. »6/06/15 1:30pm 6/06/15 1:30pm

Roughly 3.3 billion years ago, Earth’s early life forms were plunged into an unimaginable hell, when a series of massive asteroids smashed into the young planet, vaporizing the oceans and scorching the skies. »5/19/15 12:46am 5/19/15 12:46am

On May 10th, tropical storm Ana—the first named storm of this year’s North Atlantic hurricane season—made landfall along the Carolina coast. NASA scientists took the opportunity to observe the storm’s wind dynamics with one of their newest toys and produced this spectacular wind map while they were at it. »5/18/15 12:12am 5/18/15 12:12am

When denser river water flows into the ocean, it creeps along the bottom churning up sediments to create a turbidity current. For the first time, researchers caught a flood-triggered hyperpycnal flow in a murky, cloudy mess surging into the Gulf of Aqabaon video.»4/14/15 12:45pm 4/14/15 12:45pm

There's something terrifyingly strange about a landslide, of any size. The solid ground moves under your feet, and geographical features are displaced. But the larger they get, the weirder landslides become. When they get big enough, they start acting like fluids. Here's why really big landslides are completely… »4/13/15 11:18am 4/13/15 11:18am